


Lasting Impression

by imkerfuffled



Series: 25 Days of Ficlet Prompts [14]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 19:34:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3662361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imkerfuffled/pseuds/imkerfuffled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little Lucia isn't very impressed by this whole superhero thing - she thinks they're kinda dumb - but that all changes when she finds herself trapped in the school bus with a rampaging monster on the loose outside. Who should come to the rescue, but Black Widow and Hawkeye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lasting Impression

Lucia Castillo never much liked superheroes, though her older brother Adrian loved them. He owned every Captain America comic ever written, and he’d been collecting them since forever—or so he claimed. Lucia’s friend at school said she had more comics than him, _and_  she owned the entire cartoon show on DVD, so Lucia didn’t know if she believed him. Besides, forever was a long time ago—longer than Lucia could remember, and she was _eleven_ (well, ten and a half, but  _almost_ eleven)—and she remembered he only became interested in them after the aliens attacked.

In any case, she just didn’t get the  _appeal_ of superheroes. They flew around the city and blew up stuff, so what? Typical boy stuff. Her friend at school said it was  _not_ boy stuff, and girls could like it too. She also said people only thought it  _was_ boy stuff because of something called “gendered marketing” and “patriarchal conditioning,” but those sounded like fancy grown-up words that Lucia didn’t understand.

Meanwhile, the superhero craze seemed to have swept through New York all over again, and with even more intensity. Only now, instead of Iron Man, and Spider Man, and the Fantastic Four, it was the Avengers.

They were  _everywhere._ Posters, trading cards, pajamas, Halloween costumes, backpacks, shirts, lunchboxes… you name it, the Avengers were on it. She’d even seen their faces on Doritos bags, which apparently was some inside joke, because Adrian giggled every time he saw the Captain America bag. Lucia didn’t really care, since it was all boy stuff anyway, and it didn’t matter.

Until one day, it did.

It began as a perfectly normal afternoon. Lucia was on the bus ride home, sitting squished between the window and a boy who smelled like unwashed socks. The old bus rattled and shook, and Lucia was trying to think of some of her friend’s fancy grown-up words to say to the boy that would make him wash his feet more, when it happened.

The bus stopped. This in itself wouldn’t be so strange—traffic jams were a daily assumption here in New York—except they could see what was causing this jam.

At the far end of the street stood a monster straight from the reels of an old Japanese film. Its saber-toothed maw loomed over the tops of small buildings, dripping sticky saliva onto the roofs and the pavement. When it swung its massive, fleshy bulk around, its tail crashed against a building’s side with a  _crunch_ of concrete and rebar twisting out of shape. The shockwave could be felt even by the occupants of the bus.

Everyone was screaming. People streamed past the bus like minnows fleeing a predator fish. Children cried. The bus driver slammed on the lever to open the doors and swore when the bus—always faulty—chose that moment to not work. Some of the older kids pushed futilely on the emergency door and windows, but they stuck fast, useless. Trapped.

Lucia was only distantly aware of what was happening. Part of her felt so far removed from everything around her, as if she watched with the safety of a moviegoer or a reader of one of Adrian’s comic books. This was the sort of thing, she thought, that happened to  _other_ people. Not  _her._

Another part of her—the same part that thought  _maybe_ there was something important in all this fancy grown-up talk—realized exactly how dire the situation was. That part was what led her to burst into tears with the boy beside her. That part was what told her to shut her eyes, to look away like the other boy was doing and curl up into a tiny ball and never ever come out. But she couldn’t. While some kids hid under their seats, and others buried their faces in their hands, and the bus driver progressed to newer, stronger swear words that she had never heard before, Lucia pressed her face against the window and  _stared._

And so, she became one of the first to notice the red blur flying towards the creature, trailing thunder in its wake.

“Look!” someone shouted.

“It’s Thor!” cried somebody else.

The blur rammed into the beast’s side, eliciting a fearsome roar that sent several more kids diving under their seats. An answering cry sounded from the intersecting street, and a giant green creature (“The Hulk!”) launched itself at the creature’s tail, followed by Iron Man’s glowing repulsor trail and Captain America’s lightning-fast shield.

The bus cheered.

Now everybody crowded around the front windows with bated breath, hopefully, anxiously, awaiting the outcome of the battle. With each second the Avengers fought the beast, the risk of it lumbering down the street and crushing them stayed at the forefront of their minds.

Suddenly, there was a knocking on the window opposite Lucia’s. A couple people screamed, and everyone spun to face the noise. A woman with brilliant red hair stood on the hood of an empty car in the next lane over, peering into their bus. Behind her stood an angry-looking man holding a bow.

Black Widow and Hawkeye to the rescue.

The cheering on the bus was deafening.

“You stuck?” the Widow shouted to the bus driver.

He nodded, too stunned to even swear.

“Stay back from the rear of the bus,” the Widow said, causing a scramble of kids to the front. Lucia snatched up her backpack and scurried as close to the front window as possible.

Hawkeye pulled an arrow out of his quiver, nocked it, and shot it straight through the two rear windows in a shower of glass. Involuntarily, Lucia and everyone around her flinched.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Hawkeye said, as he clambered up to the side of the bus and started knocking out the remaining glass with his bow. “Hey, bro,” he addressed the bus driver as he worked, “If you want, Stark’ll hook you up with some lawyers to sue the school district for their cra…aazily unsafe busses.”

The bus driver could only stare in shock.

Meanwhile, Black Widow eyed the other end of the street apprehensively, where an ear-piercing, inhuman wail reminded everyone that the beast was still there… and getting closer.

She put a finger to her right ear, still squinting at the creature and the Avengers flying around it, “Cap, we got a bus full of elementary kids over here,” she said into what Lucia realized must be a comm unit, like in spy movies, “Careful where you’re going with that thing.” A pause. “Well, get it away from here!”

“Widow,” Hawkeye interrupted her by jerking his head at the cleared window, “That’ll do it?”

She responded by propping her foot on the sill and pulling herself into the bus.

“Anyone here have a thick jacket?” she asked the bus. Several kids nodded and stared taking off their coats, still too stunned to speak. Lucia tore out of her jacket so fast it might have been on fire and held it out at arm’s length for the superhero.

“Thanks, kid,” the Widow said, taking it from her and laying it over the broken windowsill. “Everyone, be careful of the broken glass.”

Lucia was beginning to come to he senses at last—beginning to realize the full magnitude of what was happening. This wasn’t a comic book. This wasn’t a cartoon. This was  _real._ That thing out there could  _kill her._ Black Widow and Hawkeye were standing not  _ten feet away_ from her, and they were going to save her. They were going to save  _everyone_.

And  _she had just helped them._ No matter how small and inconsequential her contribution may have been, to Lucia it was huge.

_She had helped the Avengers._

Suddenly, Lucia had a new appreciation for superheroes.

“Hey, Widow, we might want to hurry up here,” Hawkeye’s interjection broke Lucia out of her reverie, and she snapped her gaping jaw shut. She was a big kid now; she wasn’t going to act silly in front of Avengers. “Cuz Cap an’ the others are doing a f—”

“Hawkeye!”

“…Really crummy job of keeping Godzilla over there in check,” he finished. Lucia, in spite of everything, couldn’t help but giggle a little at Hawkeye almost saying a naughty word.

Her giggling was cut short when Black Widow grabbed her under the arms and scooped her into the air, carefully pushing her out the window where Hawkeye waited to take her.

Lucia was pretty sure her brain shorted out then.

“Heya, kid,” he said, dropping her as gently as possible to the ground. “Now, I want you to run as fast as you can that way.” He pointed to the opposite end of the street from the monster, where rubble rained freely from the surrounding buildings. “There’s gonna be some nice policemen over there, and they’ll make sure you’re safe. Got it?”

Lucia looked up into his steady eyes, took a deep breath, and nodded. And she ran, ignoring the earth-shattering cries of the beast behind her, ignoring the rumbling beneath her feet from its stomps, ignoring all the sounds of battling Avengers as, one-by-one, kids were lifted or climbed from the bus to safety.

And in the middle of it all, she thought,  _Man, Adrian is going to be so jealous._


End file.
